James Johnson's Defense

Mediumcore wrote:

Hi Tom,

Is there any way to see a comparison of how opposing small forwards faired against James Johnson? Like an average point total against JJ/Raptors and season average for that player? Perhaps the SF's with more notoriety.

For example...Luol Deng averaged x amount of points in 2011/2012 against the Raptors. His season average was x amount of points.

Not exactly.

This helps a bit: http://basketballvalue.com/player.ph...11-2012&id=812
You see he has a positive adjusted +/- rating. The On/off court defense differential is -2.72 (that's good - the team has a better defensive rating when he's on the floor). But this number is "unadjusted", so it doesn't take into account whether he was guarding elite players or bench players in garbage time. Since he started ~ 2/3rds the games last year, its reasonable to assume he largely played against above average wings. So, by the numbers, he is a good defender (the "eye test" confirms this as well).

This may also be helpful. It's a graph of Advanced Statistical Plus/Minus (ASPM) scores - both offense and defense.
As you can see, it shows Johnson as Toronto's best defender.

ESPN.com | How Terrence Ross became a Raptor

The Toronto Raptors used the eighth overall pick to select Washington's Terrence Ross, a decision that inspired much confused glancing about from the media members assembled in laptop covered rows just to the left of the stage where Ross was shaking hands with David Stern. Ross is a sinewy 6-7 shooter with a promising defensive profile, but Chad Ford had him listed as the 11th-best available player on his Big Board and John Hollinger ranked him the 27th-best prospect.

Did the Raptors reach for Ross?

No way, says Toronto's statistical consultant Alex Rucker, who believes Ross was the seventh-best player in the draft. In an interview with Tom Liston of Raptors Republic, Rucker explains how Toronto's analytics team informs their choices on draft night